“In 1974 Donald Sherman, whose speech was limited by a neurological disorder called Moebius Syndrome, used a new-fangled device designed by John Eulenberg to dial up a pizzeria. The first call went to Dominos, which hung up. They were apparently too busy becoming a behemoth. Mercifully, a humane pizzeria – Mr. Mike’s – took the call, and history was made. It all plays out below, and we hope that Mr. Mike’s is still thriving all these years later….” (Smithsonian.com Blog)

Speech synthesis on this computer was rather slow, and it also apparently required “Yes/No” questions to just simply generate a “Yes” or a “No” too. Still, it could also synthesize other phrases, such as the pizza toppings (pepperoni and mushrooms, salami ...), the complex delivery address (the Michigan State Computer Science Department), as well as the contact number for callback. So not bad at all!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.

TEDxManchester took place on Monday 13th February this year at one of the iconic Manchester locations – and my “local” – the Cornerhouse. Among the luminary speakers were people I have always been admiring, such as the radio Goddess Mary Anne Hobbs, and people I have become very close friends with over the years – which has led me to an equal amount of admiration, such as Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden to most of us). You can check out their respective talks, as well as some awesome others, in my TEDxManchester report below.

My TEDxManchester talk

I spoke about the weird and wonderful world of Voice Recognition (“Voice Recognition FTW!”): from the inaccurate – and far too often funny – simple voice-to-text apps and dictation systems on your smartphones, to the most frustrating automated Call Centres, to the next generation, sophisticated SIRI and everything in-between. I explained why things go wrong and when things can go wonderfully right. The answer is “CONTEXT”; the more you have of it , the more accurate and relevant the interpretation of user intention will be, and the more relevant and impressive the system reaction / reply will be.

2012 can easily be dubbed the year of TEDx for me, as by mid-February I had already attended two TEDx events! First up was TEDxSalford in late January, where I was just a mindblown attendee, and two weeks later it was TEDxManchester where I had the honour to be a speaker!

TEDxManchester took place on Monday 13th February this year at one of the iconic Manchester locations – and my “local” – the Cornerhouse. Among the luminary speakers were people I have always been admiring, such as the radio Goddess Mary Anne Hobbs, and people I have become very close friends with over the years – which has led me to an equal amount of admiration, such as Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden to most of us).

Here are their respective talks at TEDxManchester 2012 for you to get a taste of the atmosphere at the event and of the impact of the ideas and the immediacy of the sentiments circulated!

I spoke about the weird and wonderful world of Voice Recognition (“Voice Recognition FTW!”): from the inaccurate – and far too often funny – simple voice-to-text apps and dictation systems on your smartphones, to the most frustrating automated Call Centres, to the next generation, sophisticated SIRI and everything in-between. I explained why things go wrong and when things can go wonderfully right. The answer is “CONTEXT”; the more you have of it , the more accurate and relevant the interpretation of user intention will be, and the more relevant and impressive the system reaction / reply will be.

Infomorphs or a weaver… #TEDxMCR love the idea 🙂 very cool! They could work with #perceptivemedia yfrog.com/gzeg2jij
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebIan Pettigrew ‏ @KingfisherCoach

#TEDxMCR @skeuomorphology challenging ‘necessity is the mother of invention’; cars weren’t invented as a response to a shortage of horses!
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebLuke Robert Mason ‏ @LukeRobertMason

Pure information technologies are the first evolutionary aware technologies. They are stochastic… Emerge from randomness #TEDxMCR @weavrs
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 FebLuke Robert Mason ‏ @LukeRobertMason

Great, great talk by @brendandawes on the value of pursuing ideas, and the ideas they spawn, without necessarily knowing where you’re going
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
from Manchester, Manchester
13 Feb RichardMichie ‏ @RichardMichie

Failed art at school? You can still exhibit at #moma @brendandawes #tedxmcr great story love it
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 Feb @ar3toul4ki

@ar3toul4ki great talk Maria, speech recog in focus at the beeb right now, be interesting to talk once I’ve worked out what our landscape is
Retweeted by @ar3toul4ki
13 Feb TEDxManchester ‏ @TEDxManchester

2012 can already be dubbed the TEDx year for me, as it’s only mid-March and I have already attended and even contributed to two TEDx events! First up was TEDxSalford in late January and 2 weeks later it was TEDxManchester!

I was tweeting for most of the event (or when my phone battery was not dead!) and I have compiled below a list of all my relevant tweets and retweets both from the day and in the build-up to the event. I am going to add later on some notes I took while I couldn’t tweet! Hopefully the tweets convey the spirit of TEDxSalford, which can be summarised as follows: @TEDxSalford was mindblowing! So much intellect, so much empathy, so much emotion, all rolled into one .

For some time now I have been following the furore and the various (counter)arguments surrounding the infamous ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement):

” a multinational treaty for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement”,

one of which relates to “copyright infringement on the Internet”.

Now the protection of intellectual property rights is very noble in itself, but the way it is being put into context, defined, interpreted, pursued and – potentially alas! – enforced is a classic example of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater“. It goes something like this:

“Stealing is bad, so let’s assume that everyone is prone to stealing, and therefore everyone is potentially bad and should be controlled and censored, if not punished“;

I personally have never felt the need or the inclination to download anything illegally: definitely not a film (torrents sound like far too much work for me – I’d rather use the time to go to the cinema!); but not even a single mp3 (but then again, I have been lucky to be well connected with and trusted by dozens of music producers all over the world who send me links to their own tracks for me to play and promote in my shows / podcasts or gigs). For me, it’s a matter of principle to pay for goods and services anyway, esp. for culture products. And I don’t consider myself to be extra conscientious. I believe I represent the general population.

So even just the thought that – sometime in the very near future – I could suddenly be suspected and even charged of “criminal activity” for hosting on my laptop a track that I have essentially not paid for (as it was given away to me for promotional purposes by the artist themselves!) fills me with terror and visions of a 1984 societal nightmare. It may sound far-fetched and ridiculous right now, but experts from all kinds of different disciplines from Law to Social Psychology think not! ACTA paves the way for such a legal development.

It was in this context that I was recently approached by Pirate Party UK and asked whether I would stand in the upcoming Local Elections in May as their Manchester City Centre Candidate. It took me less than a minute to enthusiastically say YES! Firstly, I had personally known for some time the other two Manchester candidates, Loz Kaye (the Leader of the UK Pirate Party) and Tim Dobson (a former candidate at the 2010 National elections). We have all been attending the same numerous digital events and creative industries meetups all over Manchester (e.g. the various BarCamps and the Social Media Cafe). Secondly, I have been living and working in the Manchester City Centre for more than a decade now, so the area is especially dear to me and its issues of particular relevance of course. Thirdly, I have seen incredible openness in the Pirate Party and its policies, so I felt that I would be free to establish and work on local priorities rather than follow a potentially rigid party whip sitting in London or even in Sweden (where the Pirate Party movement originated).

So I will be standing in the May 2012 Local Elections as the Pirate Party UK Manchester City Centre Candidate. For me it’s not just about copyright, civil liberties and freedom of speech (the foci usually associated with the party); and it’s definitely NOT about impunity for malicious or unintentional illegal downloads! I see it as my chance to put my 20+year love for Manchester into practice, working for practically the only political party I respect. As I write in my first official statement:

I see (Pirate Party UK) as the only party that is adapted to the realities, the needs and challenges of the modern world, and yes that includes a strong technology focus: technology is not just for scientists, engineers, geeks, and hackers. It is an indispensable part of everyday life, including social and data communication, continuous education, as well as participatory democracy. Whoever blissfully closes their eyes to this fact will just be marginalised, let alone ignored when important decisions are taken on their behalf.

I believe it’s crucial that more government data becomes publicly available, more public services are available online, and more people in Manchester get broadband internet access and thus access to this data and those services: especially those people who need it the most: not the young to middle-aged single professionals, but the digitally disabled elderly, and the thousands of foreign students who come to study and live in the city. After all it would help them to help themselves and to contribute to the Manchester life. For me this is all about inclusion, information, understanding, empathy, participation and making the public services and data work for us all and not just for the few and the already privileged and perfectly informed.